The Quickening eBook

It was ordained that Gordon should anticipate his
appointment by meeting his man at the dinner-table
in the Marlboro cafe; and it was accident or design,
as you like to believe, that Dyckman should be sitting
two tables away, choking over his food and listening
only by the road of the eye, since he was unhappily
out of ear range. When the two had lighted their
cigars and passed out to the elevator, the bookkeeper
rose hastily and made for the nearest telephone.
This, at least, was not accidental.

The conference in Suite 32 lasted until nearly midnight,
with Dyckman painfully shadowing the corridor and
sweating like a furnace laborer, though the night
was more than autumn cool. The door was thick,
the transom was closed, and the keyhole commanded
nothing but a square of blank wall opposite in the
electric-lighted sitting-room of the suite. Hence
the bookkeeper could only guess what we may know.

“You have let in a flood of light on Mr. Farley’s
proposition, Mr. Gordon,” said the representative
of American Aqueduct, when the ground had been thoroughly
gone over. “I don’t mind telling you
now that he made his first overtures to us on his
arrival from Europe, giving us to understand that
he owned or controlled the pipe-making patents absolutely.”

“At that time he controlled nothing, as I have
explained,” said Tom, “not even his majority
stock in Chiawassee Consolidated. Of course, he
resumed control as soon as he reached home, and his
next move was to have me quietly sandbagged while
he froze my father out. But father did not transfer
the patents, for the simple reason that he couldn’t.
They are my personal property, made over to me before
the firm of Gordon and Gordon came into existence.”

The pipe-trust promoter nodded.

“You are the man we’ll have to do business
with, Mr. Gordon,” he said promptly. “Are
you quite sure of your legal status in the case?”

“I have good advice. Hanchett, Goodloe
and Tryson, Richmond Building, are my attorneys.
They will put you in the way of finding out anything
you’d like to know.”

There was a pause while the New Yorker was making
a memorandum of the address. Then he went straight
to the point.

“As I have said, I’m here to do business.
We don’t need the plant. Will you sell
us your patents?”

“Yes; on one condition.”

“And that is—?”

“That you first put us out of business.
You’ll have to smash Chiawassee Limited painstakingly
and permanently before you can buy my holdings.”

The shrewd-eyed gentleman who had unified practically
all of the pipe foundries in the United States smiled
a gentle negative.

“That would be rather out of our line.
If Mr Farley owned the patents, and was disposed to
fight us—­as, indeed, he is not—­we
might try to convince him. But we are not out
for vengeance—­another man’s vengeance,
at that.”

“Very well, then; you won’t get what you’ve
come after. The patents go with the plant.
You can’t have one without the other,”
said Tom, eyeing his opponent through half-closed
lids.